Playing Gods: The Board Game of Divine Domination
The idiom “to play God” is often associated with negative connotations. We often label others this way if they try to be controlling or make decisions on what they think is best for a person other than themselves. The term took on a whole new meaning when Balls Out Entertainment debuted their board game Playing Gods in 2008.
Playing Gods follows a very similar game play to Risk or Settlers of Catan in the sense that one player wins after dominating/destroying all of the other players in the game. Each player selects from the different Gods represented in pawn form (Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, etc) then attempts to gain world domination by gaining believers and instilling wrath upon the other Gods. There is even an expansion path where players can make up their own Gods or play with culturally relevant and satirical Gods such as Tom Cruise as the Godof Scientology as well as a McDonalds God to represent consumerism. The entire game was created as a satire and was even sold through an online realtor that specializes in atheist product, EvolveFISH. The game is now currently sold out.
USA Today released an article discussing the board game and interview with board game creator, Ben Radford. In the article he states that his reasoning for creating the game was that “much of the world’s violence is rooted in religion,” and that his satirical game would “make more social commentary” and “pierce the pretensions of extremist religious zealotry with humor.”(USA Today). It’s all fun and humorous until the not so fun details of the game begin to trickle out in the article. Each God is portrayed in a grotesque and violent manner (i.e, Buddha is equipped with a machine gun and Mohammed is equipped with a bomb) and some of the wrath cards go too far with one stating, “Overemphasis on guilt drives millions to depression and suicide. Kill three Christian sects”.
Perhaps created in good fun, I still can’t see how this game is any different than the violent video games that exist today. Radford is commenting on violence stemmed from religion but how is this game any different? If anything, I believe any confrontations or discussions centered around gameplay would contribute to the violence. Dr. Brad Bushman discusses the psychological triggers that occur when exposed to violence in media and video games stating that individuals bring their thoughts and actions in line with each other so they don’t feel guilty about them or even do the opposite of what they are consistently told is wrong. (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/get-psyched/201302/why-do-people-deny-violent-media-effects)
The USA Today article had a poll that asked readers if the game was taking things to far. The results were right down the middle. What do you think?
